Listen Closely

It's been an impressive couple of albums for Lowrider. Not just musically, although they're certainly no slouches there, but in the adventures they've had creating them as well. The last album saw some major names involved, a guest appearance from Chops Horns – who they'd met when supporting Alicia Keys – and a mix from Jason Goldstein (Beyonce and Jay-Z). Fast-forward a couple of years and while writing the next record the band were offered a rather exciting opportunity by some contacts at Red Bull: “They essentially said, 'We really like you guys and what's something that you'd like to do?',” Braithwaite recalls. “And we said, 'Well we'd love to go and play some shows in America and record in America'. And they went, 'Wicked, let's make it happen. Let's do it'. And our end of the bargain was just to do it,” he says, laughing incredulously.

That offer in hand, they jetted off to LA where they set up in the Red Bull studio for a fortnight to begin recording what would become Black Stones. With the comforts and distractions of home removed, it was a productive time for the band. The pre-production had been done on half the album before they left, and the hope for LA was to get three tracks down. They left with five in the bag.

Eager to take advantage of their trip, Lowrider then hurried off to Austin to play SXSW. “We were there for three of the days that it was on and it is a very, very insane festival,” Braithwaite marvels. “The entire city of Austin, Texas basically becomes the festival ground and there are just streets and streets and streets of live music venues. So much so that I started asking locals [whether they were real]. There's a really huge uni there, I think with over 100,000 students at it, so they kind of fuel the live music in that town. It was hard to understand [at first] how they made all these venues on every street pop-up, but they're not there for the festival, they're just there the whole time.“

It led to a touch of culture shock, coming from a country that is perpetually struggling to keep its much smaller number of venues alive. “It was very different,” Braithwaite confirms. “I think the appreciation for music over there is very different to here as well. I'm not sure why it is, but people are really intent on paying attention to music over there. We'd be in some dingy pub and people would intently listen and want to be a part of the music. Whereas over here, as I'm sure many people have experienced, you can walk into a pub and there's a band playing but no one's really even listening. That's not something that we experienced over there at all, which was one of the things that blew our minds the most, really.”

That said, Braithwaite is very excited to be getting back on the road himself. “Getting out and playing is mostly what I'm looking forward to,” he comments, looking at the year ahead. “We didn't really play a whole lot last year in Australia and we've got this one tour set out [for now], but I would love to do another ten. I just really want to get out there and play this music. It was kind of built for live performance and it will be good to just play as much as we can this year.

“Playing an arena with Alicia Keys has its perks, but just as exciting is playing our local music venue here in Adelaide. There's something about getting 400 to 1000 in a room, especially when they're very intent on listening to your music, specifically. That's an extremely special thing.”

Lowrider will be playing the following dates:

Friday 1 March – Alhambra, Brisbane QLD
Saturday 2 March – Shark Bar, Gold Coast QLD
Friday 22 March – Corner Hotel, Melbourne VIC
Saturday 23 March – Pier Live, Frankston VIC
Sunday 24 March – Theatre Royal, Castlemaine VIC
Friday 5 April – Hotel New York, Launceston TAS
Saturday 6 April – Republic Bar, Hobart TAS
Friday 12 April – Notes, Newtown NSW